Our View: Let's check in on our Puerto Rican neighbors

The Herald News Editorial Board

Sunday

Oct 1, 2017 at 6:00 AM

To us in Fall River, more so than in some parts of America, the pain of worrying about family “back home,” is an understood thing.

For decades, Fall River has been concerned with tragedy in one or another of our population’s many “Old Country” birthplaces. Residents of the city contributed money to the cause of Irish freedom, were horrified and grief-stricken by The Holocaust. We respond generously to natural disasters in the Azores. During World War II, Polish and Ukrainian immigrants in Fall River suffered as the village they left behind vanished into the mouth of Nazism. Sometimes, their parents still lived in that village.

Over the years, money, tears and prayers have moved from Fall River to someplace we or our parents used to call home.

Puerto Rico is not a foreign country. It’s America. If we think of Puerto Ricans as “immigrants,” it’s because they speak a language other than English when they arrive, as did so many of our parents or grandparents.

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico like a hammer. They’re flooded, out of food, out of water, without power. Their houses are gone. People are injured. Some have died. Meanwhile, your nice neighbor across the street desperately tries to get in touch with his parents in Bayamon, and his sister in Ponce. The woman who sits at the next desk looks like she’s been crying.

To us in Fall River, more so than in some parts of America, the pain of worrying about family “back home,” is an understood thing. We know that heartbreak. Your grandmother died in Portugal, but your parents couldn’t afford to go back and see her during her last illness.

It happens, and it happens in Pakistani, and Spanish, and Portuguese, and Haitian Creole, a scramble of languages, all of which have words for work, and worry, and grief.

Donate a little money for aid to the people of Puerto Rico, as you did for the people of Houston. And that guy you know, the one with a couple of family members “back home?” Ask him if they’re alright.